Bitcoin surges past $75,000 on track for strongest week since March 2024
Bitcoin jumped as much as 4.2 per cent to $75,740 in Asian trading on Friday, pushing the largest cryptocurrency back above the psychologically significant $75,000 level and putting it on course for its biggest weekly gain in more than two years.
Bloomberg reported that Bitcoin was trading around $74,500 by noon in Singapore, having climbed steadily since a broader crypto rebound began on Wednesday. If the week’s nearly 20 per cent gain holds through the Friday close, it would mark the asset’s strongest weekly increase since March 2024.
The move caps a dramatic reversal for a market that had spent recent months range trading, weighed down by volatility and fading momentum. What began as a macro-driven spark on Wednesday quickly snowballed into a full-blown rally, with forced liquidations of short positions amplifying the upward pressure on price.
The catalyst: Treasury buybacks and a presidential audience
The immediate trigger came from an unlikely quarter for a crypto story: the United States Treasury market.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on Wednesday that the Treasury would at least double the size of its long-dated bond buybacks. Bloomberg reported that the decision pushed long-term yields lower, improved risk appetite across asset classes, and set off a rally that forced traders to liquidate billions of dollars in short positions.
Rachael Lucas, an analyst at BTC Markets, said the macro policy shift was the genuine engine behind the move. “The real driver was the US Treasury doubling long-dated bond buybacks, which pulled long yields lower and lifted risk appetite broadly,” she said.
That framing matters. The rally was not primarily a crypto-specific event, driven by some protocol upgrade or exchange listing. It was a classic risk-on rotation, in which falling long-dated yields made risk assets across the board, including Bitcoin, more attractive to investors rotating out of fixed income.
The timing was reinforced by politics. On the same day as Bessent’s announcement, President Donald Trump met with crypto industry leaders, adding to the positive tone in the market. The combination of accommodative-sounding Treasury policy and a White House visibly engaging with the sector gave traders two reasons to buy at once.
For a market as sensitive to liquidity conditions as crypto, the effect was immediate. Lower long-term yields reduce the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets such as Bitcoin. They also tend to weaken the dollar’s pull on capital flows and encourage investors further out the risk curve. When that dynamic collides with a crypto market carrying heavy short positioning, the result is a squeeze, and this week delivered a textbook example.
Short sellers squeezed as $2.7 billion in bearish bets liquidated
The mechanics of the rally were as important as its cause. Earlier in the week, Bitcoin had already surged as short sellers were forced out of their positions, and Bloomberg reported that the crypto market saw a record $2.7 billion in bearish bets liquidated across tokens.
Liquidations of that scale are self-reinforcing. When short positions are liquidated, exchanges forcibly buy back the underlying asset to close the trades, which pushes prices higher, which in turn triggers the next tranche of liquidations. The result is a vertical price move that can appear far more dramatic than the underlying news flow alone would justify.
That dynamic explains how Bitcoin travelled from a period of listless range trading to a nearly 20 per cent weekly gain in the space of a few sessions. The macro catalyst lit the fuse, but the positioning of the market supplied the explosive.
The rally also follows signs of improving underlying demand that had been building before this week’s breakout. Bloomberg noted renewed buying by large holders, often described as whales, alongside strong interest in spot Bitcoin ETFs earlier in August. Institutional flows through exchange-traded products have become a structural feature of the Bitcoin market, and sustained inflows tend to provide a floor under price during drawdowns.
Taken together, the ingredients were unusually well aligned: a macro policy shock that lowered yields, a sympathetic political backdrop, record short liquidations, whale accumulation and resilient ETF demand. Any one of these alone might have produced a modest bounce. In combination, they produced the strongest weekly performance in more than two years.
What the breakout means for the market outlook
The most immediate significance of Friday’s move is psychological. Bitcoin reclaiming $75,000 re-establishes a level that had acted as a ceiling during the asset’s weaker stretch, and breakout moves through well-watched round numbers tend to draw in momentum buyers who were waiting on the sidelines for confirmation.
The macro read-through is equally important. If the Treasury’s expanded buyback programme continues to suppress long-dated yields, the liquidity environment that fuelled this rally may persist rather than prove a one-off. Risk assets, and Bitcoin in particular, have historically performed well in periods of abundant liquidity and falling real yields. Conversely, the rally’s dependence on Treasury policy is also its principal vulnerability. Any reversal in the buyback programme, or a hawkish surprise from the Federal Reserve that pushes long yields back up, could unwind the same trades just as quickly as they were put on.
The short-covering component cuts both ways as well. Squeezes are powerful but finite. Once the record $2.7 billion in bearish bets has been flushed out of the system, continued upside requires genuine new demand rather than forced buying. The renewed accumulation by large holders and ETF interest reported earlier in August suggest that demand may exist, but the market will need to demonstrate it in the weeks ahead.
For regulators and policymakers, the episode is a reminder of how tightly crypto is now woven into the broader financial system. A Treasury buyback announcement in Washington moved Bitcoin nearly 20 per cent in a week and liquidated billions in derivatives positions across offshore venues. That interconnectivity is precisely the phenomenon that regulators have flagged as a concern, and it strengthens the case for robust disclosure and margin standards in crypto derivatives markets. It also underscores why the Trump administration’s engagement with industry leaders is being watched so closely by market participants, who see Washington’s posture as a key variable in the sector’s trajectory.
Investors tracking the aftermath can follow developments in our Bitcoin coverage, where we monitor price action, ETF flows and the macro signals shaping the market.
Closing analysis: a macro rally with a crypto accelerant
The honest interpretation of this week is that Bitcoin did not rally because Bitcoin changed. The technology, the halving schedule and the on-chain fundamentals are broadly what they were a fortnight ago. What changed was the macro backdrop: long-dated yields fell, risk appetite returned, and a market stuffed with short positions was forced to cover at record scale.
That is not to diminish the move. Reclaiming $75,000 and posting the best week since March 2024 is a genuine momentum shift, and the supporting signals of whale accumulation and ETF demand give the rally more substance than a pure squeeze would offer. But the sustainability question now sits squarely with the Treasury market and the Federal Reserve. If yields stay suppressed, Bitcoin has a tailwind. If they do not, Friday’s gains will be tested quickly.
For now, the market’s verdict is clear. Macro policy, short-covering and renewed crypto optimism combined to produce the strongest weekly gain in more than two years, and Bitcoin enters the weekend above a level that many traders had written off only days earlier.
